Who gets to be independent?: Labelling and boundary work of China's indie game scene

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, this article examines independence as a contested label sustained through boundary work rather than a fixed structural condition. In the absence of formal institutional definitions, developers mobilize the indie label to signal mutual recognition, draw moral boundaries against commercial logics, and negotiate what counts as legitimate participation. This boundary work unfolds across three registers: scene-building identity, institutionally entangled ‘relative independence’, and culturally situated expression within transnational markets. By analysing how labelling and boundary-making operate in China's hybrid production ecology – where platformization, state-backed infrastructures, and cultural governance overlap – the study contributes to game production research by shifting attention from classifications to the communicative practices through which indie autonomy is enacted and legitimized.